May I give my respects to the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) for bringing this debate to the House? I have
heard some very interesting figures this evening—in particular, that 250,000 people have signed previous amendments and discussion points about this issue over the years, and I know that there have been all sorts of discussions about this very issue for as long as I have been in Parliament.
I am not surprised that new clause 7 has attracted cross-party support, with many Members, both female and male, from the Government, SNP and, obviously, Labour Benches supporting it, and so they absolutely should, because this has always been, and will always be, a wholly illogical tax. We heard some interesting detail from my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main). I would not know the difference between various products if they were laid out, yet some would be zero-rated and some would be taxed at the lower rate, although this is not just a female issue. I think she described some of these items as “Oops-a-daisy” products, and if there is a male “Oops-a-daisy” product, it would be zero-rated, so we can immediately see these anomalies in the tax system. Nappies have always been zero-rated because they relate to children. Indeed, one of the anomalies that we have enjoyed compared with much of the European Union—how long that will last, who knows—is that children’s products and food continue to be zero-rated, no matter how luxurious the food might appear to some.
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The reason we have the anomaly with tampons and female sanitary products is historical. Prior to 1 January 1973, when we joined the European Union, we had a sales tax on these products—whereas the Republic of Ireland had decided, for whatever historical reason, not to have a sales tax on tampons and similar items, as was well highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin)—so we were stuck with it from the day we joined. At that time, most of the Members of this House would doubtless have been of my gender, so it probably did not rank that highly among their concerns.
Despite those anomalies, we are in a customs union with the European Union and, to a certain extent, VAT rates can be different. For instance, a couple of weeks ago I was in Luxembourg on parliamentary business, and there the standard rate of VAT on products is 17%, whereas in Hungary it is 27%, and some countries have a tourist rate or a restaurant rate, which might mean a deduction of 10%. Even in this country we have had some flexibility on VAT rates over the years. At one time it was 8%, before moving to 15%, then to 17.5%, and then back to 15% for a bit; and now here we are, with VAT back up to 20%.
It is quite remarkable how this evening’s debate has managed to get Members so active. We have discussed feminism at some length and we even managed to touch on grammar schools—which I thought was quite a clever move—as well as the fan club of Dawn Primarolo. We salute Dawn Primarolo for what she did in 2000, when she reduced the VAT rate applying to tampons and the like from the standard rate, which I assume was 15% at the time, down to 5%. We must ask ourselves: why did she not go that extra 5%? Quite curiously, it was not until 2006, some six years after the reduction in the rate on tampons, that the rate applying to condoms was reduced
from the full standard rate—which at that time would probably have been 17.5%—to 5%. It took six years to get there.
If memory serves me well, Gordon Brown at that time was doing something to the economy, and perhaps it was appropriate at that time to reduce tax while he was doing it. Again, though, why was the rate on the condom—a product that is the most valuable barrier against sexually transmitted diseases and higher pregnancy rates in this country—not reduced to 0%? The difference is that they are freely available in many clinics, but we were incapable, despite the benefits of such a product, of getting the tax rate down to 0%.
Therein lie the arguments that many of us have made this evening. I support the proposal of the hon. Member for Dewsbury because it is the right thing to do. These products are not a luxury; they are essentials and they should not be taxed, in the same way that post-natal pads, which the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) mentioned, are not taxed. They are an essential part of a woman’s life, so tampons should be similarly taxed, yet we are incapable of doing so because of that old historical anomaly, dating back to before 1 January 1973; and herein is the rub with the European aspect of this. I have no doubt that Ministers over the years would have listened carefully to what you have said and what many people across this House and this country—